The top of the 2014 draft class looks at least as good as 2011 and 2012 crops…

It’s said there are no sure-fire scoring stars in this year’s NHL draft, not one hot shot like a Patrick Kane, a Taylor Hall, a Steven Stamkos, or a John Tavares.

While that’s a fair and accurate enough statement, it’s worth noting that the points-per-game totals of players like Sam Reinhart, Leon Draisaitl and Sam Bennett aren’t that far off the totals of big name players in previous drafts.

Reinhart isn’t at the top end, but with 105 points in 60 games, 1.75 points per game, he’s sandwiched between Hall and Stamkos. With 105 points in 64 games, the 6-feet, 2-inch, 210-pound Draisaitl is just ahead of Yakupov and just behind MacKinnon and Seguin. Bennett, with 91 points in 57 games, is at 1.6 points per game, ahead of Nugent-Hopkins and Duchene.

If you go by points-per-game of the top-ranked attackers, this draft looks to have at least the star power of the 2012 and 2011 drafts.

Of course, points-per-game isn’t the be-all, end-all of rating prospects. Some top-ranked prospects who have ripped it up in their draft years haven’t kept on ripping in the National Hockey League, including two smaller centres, Sam Gagner, 2.23 points per game, and Derrick Brassard, 2.0 points per game. Could the smaller Reinhart –as high as his point scoring totals are — turn out to be more like them than Nathan MacKinnon? Possibly.

Yakupov, Huberdeau and Ryan Strome, at 1.63 points per game, have also yet to take off as NHL scorers, and they are all in the same points-per-game range as Draisaitl and Bennett.

If we dig in to the numbers a bit more, though, Draisaitl looks a wee bit more promising than his points-per-game total suggests.

In the last two months of the 2013-14 season, the skilled German attacker scored 54 points in 31 games for the Prince Alberta Raiders. That works out to 1.75 points per game. Only two players in major junior were hotter, Tampa Bay’s top pick Jonathan Drouin, 2.52 points per game, and Reinhart, 2.04 points per game.

Bennett had 30 points in 19 games of that final stretch, 1.58 points per game. He missed some time in the final two months, reportedly with an upper body injury.

More context comes from looking at the quality of linemates of Reinhart, Draisaitl and Bennett. This kind of context is important because a player like Gagner, who hasn’t yet fully lived up to his major junior goal-scoring totals, was on a high-powered London Knights team, led by Patrick Kane and Sergei Kostitsyn.

None of the 2014 crop were surrounded with that kind of star talent, but Reinhart’s skilled teammates include Jaedon Descheneau, who scored 98 points, Luke Philp, 77, and Tim Bozon, 62. Bennett was on a high-scoring Kingston team, lining up with Henri Ikonen, 70 points in just 54 games, Spencer Watson, 68 points, and Darcy Greenaway, 62.

Draisaitl? He was assisted by a top defenceman in Winnipeg pick Josh Morrissey, who had 73 points, but other than these two, the talent level in Prince Albert was low, with not one other forward likely to crack the top two lines on a strong Western Hockey League team.

In this regard, some interesting research was done by an analytics writer who goes by the pen name of Romulus Apotheosis at the Oilers Rig blog. He looked at Draisaitl and the other top prospects in terms of the percentage they chip in on a goal when they are on the ice for an even-strength goal. The theory here is that the higher percentage of goals a player chips in on, the more likely it is his team is asking him to carry a heavy load. For example, in the last four years, Taylor Hall has led the NHL in this particular stat, individual points percentage, chipping in on 85 per cent, with Sidney Crosby in second at 83 per cent.

This year with Prince Albert, Draisaitl chipped in on 91 per cent, Reinhart 84 per cent and Bennett 74 per cent. It’s clear Draisaitl was asked to push a big rock up a tall mountain in Prince Albert, and he did so very well, at least until it came crashing down for him and his team in first round of the WHL playoffs against an extremely tough defensive team in the Edmonton Oil Kings.

Reinhart and Draisaitl look to be solid top picks, with the potential to be excellent first line attackers in the NHL. Bennett, too, has real promise, and might just shoot to the top based on his noted grit, the fact he did his scoring in a slightly tougher Ontario Hockey League, and the fact he’s eight months younger than Draisaitl and seven months younger than Reinhart. Bennett did almost as much at a younger age, a feather in his prospect’s cap.

In the end, along with highly-rated d-man Aaron Ekblad, it looks like there’s at least four top prospects in the 2014 draft, all of them close in value at this point, each of them with a reasonable shot at becoming an NHL star.

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